President Obama has issued an executive order allowing the Pentagon to call up reserve troops to combat the Ebola crisis in Africa.

Obama notified Congress of his order Thursday. It reads: "I hereby determine that it is necessary to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation United Assistance, which is providing support to civilian-led humanitarian assistance and consequence management support related to the Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa.

The Pentagon is identifying gaps that active-duty troops cannot fill, said a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly about the issue. Among the specialists that might be tapped: technical engineering, communication systems, logisticians, comptrollers and religious specialists.

All reservists called to duty will be given proper training and medical-threat briefings, the official said.

Warning that Americans are losing faith in their government's ability to stop Ebola, Republican lawmakers on Thursday pressed for a ban on travel to the U.S. from the West African outbreak zone. The White House resisted the idea and tried to tamp down fear as the pool of Americans being monitored expanded.

WikiLeaks on Thursday released a second updated version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Intellectual Property Rights chapter, charging that it will hinder affordable access to medicines globally, increase online surveillance, and impinge on civil liberties while benefiting Big Pharma and other corporate interests.

"Our first impression in reading the document is the extent to which the United States has sought hundreds of changes in intellectual property norms, some small and subtle, others blunt and aggressive, nearly of all of which favor big corporate right holders, and undermine the public’s freedom to use knowledge," declared James Love of Knowledge Ecology International.

The TPP is the world's largest economic trade agreement that will, if it goes into effect, encompass more than 40 percent of the world's GDP. The IP chapter covers topics from pharmaceuticals, patent registrations, and copyright issues to digital rights.

“This is not a time for us to rest on our laurels or think we can cut the defense budget and spend all that money on highways or whatever else we might want to spend it on,” he said. “We really need a strong leader, and we need somebody who can step up and remind the world what the United States is capable of and demonstrate the ability and the willingness to do that.”

The following day, hundreds of students and teachers led a protest demanding the safe return of the 43 missing students and the immediate resignation of Governor Aguirre for allowing drug cartels to infiltrate the police and local government. Confronted with police in riot gear, the protesters overturned cars, smashed windows, and set fire to the state government headquarters in Chilpancingo. Allowing government employees to flee, the protesters ransacked their offices vowing to radicalize and take even more extreme actions if their demands were not met.

On Tuesday, police surrounded alleged cartel leader Benjamin Mondragon Pereda in the city of Jiutepec. After negotiating the safe departure of a pregnant woman from the scene, Mondragon killed himself to avoid capture. Authorities believe his gang is responsible for the transportation of heroin and marijuana to the violent streets of Chicago.

The $30 billion U.S. National Institutes of Health blamed tightening federal budgets on Monday for its inability to produce an Ebola vaccine, but a review of its grant-making history in the last 10 years has turned up highly unusual research that redirected precious funds away from more conventional public health projects.

The projects included $2.4 million to develop 'origami' condoms designed with Japanese folding paper in mind, and $939,000 to find out that male fruit flies prefer to romance younger females because the girl-flies' hormone levels drop over time.

Other winners of NIH grants consumed $325,000 to learn that marriages are happier when wives calm down more quickly during arguments with their husbands, and $257,000 to make an online game as a companion to first lady Michelle Obama's White House garden.

The agency also spent $117,000 in taxpayers' grant dollars to discover that most chimpanzees are right-handed.

U.S. medical officials have repeatedly said – almost like a mantra – that Ebola can’t possibly effect our country because we have the “strongest” and “best” medical system in the world.

Were they speaking as scientists … or salesman? After all, the U.S. has the most expensive medical system in the world. And – like all good salesmen – they have to talk up and justify the super-pricey product.

In fact, independent studies rank the strength and quality of our system as low.

Congressional lawmakers will probe the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak on Thursday amid growing fears of wider transmission after two health-care workers who treated an infected patient were diagnosed with the disease.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The cottage is on fire and Congress sits down to discuss whether or not they should buy a fire extinguisher!

Fire (not to mention Ebola) is a very real danger, but this government was caught off guard because for the last several years all their time, energy, and OUR money has been spent on the fiction of human-caused global warming, not to mention propping up Wall Street, Israel, and arming the Syrian Rebels, even though the CIA said this was not likely to work. To that end, the Obama administration sold the fire extinguisher (canceled the CDC's program to deal with a major epidemic outbreak in the US) back in 2010.

I understand that choosing a government is a political process. What I do not understand is allowing the political process to run the government!

UPDATE: So far the discussion is focused on getting a vaccine ready for sale and sending troops to Africa to save them from ISISbola!

Darren Seals experienced waves of disbelief and anger after Michael Brown’s death, but two months later, he has found a way to channel his emotions: Focus on changing an elected leadership that seems deaf to the concerns of African American residents like him.

So on Nov. 4, the 27-year-old assembly-line worker and hip-hop musician from a deeply Democratic community plans to take bold action. He says he will vote for a white Republican.

Monsanto, Dow, Cargill, and many dozen food manufacturers are trying to fight the imminent passage of labeling bills in both Colorado and Oregon, claiming that GMOs’ are ‘safe,’ and that labeling will only lead to food hysteria. But the fact is, much of the modern world requires labeling of GMO foods, or downright bans them. What about the United States? No labeling here!

California's health insurance exchange is canceling Obamacare coverage for 10,474 people who failed to prove their citizenship or legal residency in the U.S.

Covered California, the state-run insurance exchange, enrolled more than 1.2 million people during the rollout of the Affordable Care Act this year. For most consumers, the exchange said, it could verify citizenship or immigration status instantly with a federal data hub.

A Holocaust denial video that suggested Jews were not exterminated by gas chambers at the Nazi Auschwitz concentration camp mysteriously received flattering praise in letters from the offices of one U.S. representative, a Maine state representative and a high-ranking policy adviser to the president of Hungary who now works for NATO.

A fourth letter from a U.S. representative acknowledged receiving the video, but only described it as “informative,” and returned the video to the sender.

The Washington Times reached three of the four individuals whose offices sent out the flattering responses, and, in all three cases, officials denied having actually watched the video and offered apologies.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Well, that's politicians for you. But despite the obvious bias of "How could you praise that documentary" in the Washington Times, the video is very good, worth watching, and presents a strong case that the real events of Nazi Germany were greatly exaggerated to create political support for the creation of the state of Israel.

The Ebola finger-pointing kicked into a higher gear Monday as politicians in Washington blamed each other for cutting research funding, even as the federal government’s top disease chief apologized for suggesting workers at a Dallas hospital failed to follow protocols, leading to this weekend’s first U.S.-contracted case of the deadly virus.

More than $1bn earmarked for the reconstruction of Iraq was stolen and spirited to a bunker in Lebanon as the American and Iraqi governments ignored appeals to recover the money, it has been claimed.

Stuart Bowen, a former special inspector general who investigated corruption and waste in Iraq, said the stash accounted for a significant chunk of the huge sums which vanished during the chaotic months following the 2003 US-led invasion.

Bowen’s team discovered that $1.2bn to $1.6bn was moved to a bunker in rural Lebanon for safe keeping – and then pleaded in vain for Baghdad and Washington to act, according to James Risen, a journalist who interviewed Bowen for a book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War, to be published this week.

Corrente readers could see this coming in May 2013: "California exchange spending and contractors exempted from open records law". I'm sure there are plenty of rationalizations for exemptions like that, but it's hard to think of any good reasons. And so we come to today's story from AP:

AP Exclusive: California gives no-bid health pacts

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- California's health insurance exchange has awarded $184 million in contracts without the competitive bidding and oversight that is standard practice across state government, including deals that sent millions of dollars to a firm whose employees have long-standing ties to the agency's executive director. ...

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) believes President Barack Obama should appoint a "czar" to lead America's response to Ebola.

"From spending time here in Arizona, my constituents are not comforted. There has to be more reassurance given to them. I would say that we don't know exactly who's in charge. There has to be some kind of czar," McCain said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union."

Webmaster's Commentary:

Note the use of the word "reassurance." The politicians are still treating Ebola like a political issue (and a damned inconvenient one, surfacing just ahead of the mid-terms). They are still focused on looking like they are doing something about the problem, rather than doing something about the problem.

Though the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) refuses to discuss the origin of the current outbreak of Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), the fact that emergency rooms across the country began seeing infected children around the same time as the nation's public schools were re-opening for the 2013-2014 school year, should serve as at least a clue as to how the virus made its way here.

Of course, the Obama administration has allowed tens of thousands of children to enter this country illegally over the past several months, and most of them have now been admitted to our public schools.

Three years ago, reporter and former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert took to the road and traveled across the United States to gather research for his new book, Losing Our Way. In it, Herbert tells the stories of the brave, hard-working men and women he met who have been battered by the economic downturn. He found an America in which jobs have disappeared, infrastructure is falling apart and the “virtuous cycle” of well-paid workers spending their wages to power the economy has been broken by greed and the gap between the very rich and everyone else.

Tens of thousands of people are flooding the streets of cities all over Europe on Saturday in mass rallies against a controversial trade agreement between the US and the EU.

Talks on the pact, called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), started last February and, having been mostly held behind closed doors, have raised widespread concerns in the European Union and beyond.

Social networks have been mobilized for a mass campaign that has been calling on Europeans and Americans to take action against “the biggest corporate power grab in a decade.”

Republican Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Friday that he thinks the IRS targeting scandal was driven by Valerie Jarrett’s office in the White House, according to information that he saw that Democrats tried to “whitewash.”

Roberts told talk radio host Hugh Hewitt that he participated in a Senate Finance Committee investigation into the IRS scandal but “the effort was made by the majority, by the Democrats in the Congress, to simply end that investigation,” which he called a “whitewash.”

A top Democratic pollster thinks Hispanic voters may sit out the 2014 midterm elections because President Barack Obama did not enact his executive amnesty by the end of the summer.

Pollster Celinda Lake told The Hill that Democrats face "a big uphill battle for the Latino turnout, and that's going to affect our candidates" in places like Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Georgia.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So, Obama allowed all these illegals into the nation, carrying all these infectious illnesses like drug-resistant tuberculosis and Enterovirus, simply to create some new Democratic voters out of thin air!

A prominent pro-life Republican in South Carolina has a plan to stop an Ebola outbreak in the United Nations.

Kill anyone who gets it.

Todd Kincannon, the former executive director of the South Carolina GOP went on a Twitter tirade this weekend.

His first tweet read: “People with Ebola in the US need to be humanely put down immediately.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Pro-life, huh?

The current Ebola has a 56% lethality rate, so almost half the people Kincannon wants to kill would live if left alone.

Now I agree with those who say that everyone even suspected of having Ebola ought to be in BSL4 isolation, and yes, livestock such as pigs and dogs who are asymptomatic carriers should be put down, but Kincannon's suggestion seems a bit extreme to me!

Gov. Rick Perry is visiting Army troops before they deploy to West Africa to support U.S. efforts to contain and eradicate Ebola.

The Republican is coming to the sprawling Army installation at Fort Hood on Thursday to address the soldiers before they leave. He isn't seeking re-election in November but is seriously considering a second run for the White House in 2016.

The first federal prosecutor to probe the financial dealings of Bill and Hillary Clinton says he was poised to bring high-profile indictments against top Arkansas political and business figures — based in part on testimony from a chief witness against the then president — when he was abruptly replaced by a panel of federal judges, throwing his investigation into turmoil.

"I was angry, frustrated and above all disappointed that I was not going to be able to carry through and finish bringing the indictments," writes Robert Fiske, a former U.S. attorney who served as the original independent counsel in charge of the Whitewater investigation, in a forthcoming memoir, "Prosecutor Defender Counselor."

Fiske — ever the punctilious prosecutor — offers no judgments on the conduct of the Clintons, nor on that of the man who replaced him, Kenneth Starr.

Kellogg is a large contributor to a group against an initiative in Oregon to label genetically modified foods, according to the St. Louis Business Journal.

The publication reported Tuesday the Battle Creek-based company has contributed $250,000 to the "No on 92 Coalition." The organization includes business groups such as the Oregon Manufacturers Association but also has backing from Monsanto Co., which has spent $1.5 million to defeat Measure 92, according to the Oregon Secretary of State's Office.

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports that a coalition led by the group Wisconsin Jobs Now had seized on a provision in Wisconsin law which states that the minimum wage must be a “living wage” – defined as “reasonable comfort, reasonable physical well-being, decency and moral well-being.” However, the Journal-Sentinel noted, state law also allows governors to weigh such factors as the wage’s impact on the labor market. (Studies show that state increases in the minimum wage don’t harm job growth.)

Citing the living wage provision, the coalition last month urged the Walker administration’s labor department to raise the state’s minimum wage. In rebuffing the effort, the Walker administration isn’t just citing the other factors a governor is allowed to consider – it’s actually asserting that $7.25 an hour is a living wage.

On his blog on the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), director Dr. Tom Frieden wrote that sealing borders, restricting travel to and from countries with widespread cases of Ebola, and otherwise isolating communities infected with the deadly disease “increases people’s distrust of government, making them less likely to co-operate to help stop the spread of Ebola.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Frieden has been given is marching orders to keep the borders open, keep Americans buying airline tickets, keep them going to the malls for the Christmas shopping season, make sure they show up to vote, and especially not let them forget that what they are SUPPOSED to be afraid of are those eeeeeeeevil mooslims that need a good bombing.

The World Health Organization has said repeatedly it does not recommend travel bans on the countries affected by the Ebola outbreakl because that would leave the countries cut off from the rest of the world, “resulting in detrimental economic consequences, and hinder relief and response efforts, risking further international spread.” http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2014/ebola-2nd-ihr-meet...

The key problem in travel bans, says the WHO and others, is that ending flights in and out of affected countries hinders these countries’ ability to receive the new supplies they so desperately need. As well, there are already not enough health workers on the ground in the affected countries. What foreign worker would willingly fly into the epidemic to offer assistance knowing they might not be allowed to fly back out?

Webmaster's Commentary:

This is about protecting the profits of the airline corporations as we head into the holiday travel season. The fact is that the United States maintains a military airlift capability that is the rival of any commercial airline and can go wherever they need to go. The US Government is still treating Ebola as a political and economic issue. They want people to keep buying airline tickets. They want people to flood into the shopping malls for the Christmas shopping season. They want to make sure everyone shows up to vote next month. And mostly they don't want people to start thinking that maybe it is time to stop waging wars against countries on the other side of the globe and spend the taxpayer's money to protect the US from a major epidemic.

“While fraud and corruption are revealed on almost a daily basis now in the vaccine industry, the U.S. mainstream media continues to largely ignore such stories. Outside the U.S., however, the vaccine empires are beginning to crumble, and English versions of the news in mainstream media outlets are available via the Internet.

One such country is India, where the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and their vaccine empire are under fire, including a pending lawsuit currently being investigated by the India Supreme Court.” [1]

The Health Impact News article centered largely on a four-page report that was recently published by Economic Times India.

An accountant who became an FBI whistleblower in a Medicare fraud investigation against a hospital chain spoke out on Monday, saying the company’s former chief executive, Florida Governor Rick Scott, must have known about hundreds of millions of dollars in theft.

“Fraud was brewing in the DNA of Rick Scott’s company from the very beginning, and he was the father of it,” John Schilling said at a news conference organized by the rival gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Charlie Crist.

Scott is facing off against Crist in a close election battle, an expensive and closely watched political race for the nation’s largest swing state.

Governor Sean Parnell has ordered the Alaska National Guard’s top commander to rehire two senior officers he fired last week as the trio were all competing for the same higher-ranking job, officials said on Monday.

Brigadier General Mike Bridges, the guard’s top acting official in Alaska, fired Brigadier General Catherine Jorgensen and Colonel Edie Grunwald on Thursday, Parnell’s spokeswoman said in a statement.

Parnell spokeswoman Sharon Leighow declined to provide the original reason for the firings. But she said Parnell had not been consulted on the move and ordered the pair rehired after he learned of the dismissals.

We try to stay positive here at Cracked, but we're starting to suspect that the American political system is fucked. We know it sounds crazy, but hear us out -- Congress' approval is at an all-time low, and a record number of Americans now believe that government corruption is widespread. So how the hell did things get this bad?

We wanted to find out, so we sat down with three people who could shine some light on this mystery: the former aid to a high-level career politician, a member of the Electoral College, and the infamous former lobbyist Jack Abramoff (no, really). Here's what we learned:

As reported by Al Jazeera, Hillary Clinton now publicly acknowledges her globally isolated role in aiding a terrorist organization in the overthrow of Honduras’s democratically elected president, Manuel Zelaya, in 2009.

Demonstrating her unwavering commitment to democracy and respect for the Honduran people, Clinton says she cemented the terrorist takeover by blocking Zelaya’s attempts to return to his elected post.

The NOSB is supposed to be comprised of individuals representing farmers, environmentalists, public interest advocates, handlers, retailers, scientists and a USDA certifying agent, as reported by Natural News. However, one of the nation's leading organic industry watchdog groups has persistently criticized the selection of four NOSB board appointees and the secrecy surrounding their nominations.

"The selection process was conducted in secrecy despite requests to cast sunlight on the decision making and solicit input from a very engaged community of organic farmers, businesses, and consumers," said Will Fantle, the co-director for The Cornucopia Institute.

"We think a more transparent process would ensure the selection of the best and brightest for the various vacancies on the board -- instead of, once again, appeasing the organic corporate lobby."

It seems that, perhaps, Israel’s latest slaughter of defenseless Palestinians may have been a bit too much even for the United States to condone. In what may be the U.S.’s harshest, although still quite mild, criticism of its puppet master, President Barack Obama said that the plan to increase illegal settlement building could alienate Israel from ‘even its closest allies’.

There is, of course, no closer ally of Israel than the United States. Israel is able to disdain international law, violate the most basic human rights of Palestinians, slaughter men, women and children, bomb United Nations refugee centers, kill journalists and commit genocide only because of U.S. funding and use of its veto power in the U.N.

But the U.S., this time, went even further in its criticism. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that the newly-approved construction would cause the global community to ‘question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement’ with Palestinians.

The insistent evangelical voice will ring out soon, and very close to the U.S. Capitol building. Scheduled for Sunday afternoon in Upper Senate Park, it’s the Rally for Israel, organized primarily by potential White House hopeful Mike Huckabee and Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America.

“It’s time for the United States to join together in prayer and support for Israel. I have been to Israel nearly 30 times over the past 41 years and have never seen the nation under such threat,” Mr. Huckabee observes.

The Center for Disease control is a rogue institution engaged in the destruction of the health of the American population . . .

CDC is a for-profit corporation listed on Dun and Bradstreet
CDC partners with big pharma
CDC deceives health practitioners as well as the public
CDC orchestrates propaganda campaigns
CDC wastes millions of dollars
CDC hires researchers to create bogus studies
CDC does not answer to the people, but promotes whatever agenda those who control the White House (the internationl banksters) wish advanced
CDC directs the public health institutions and even has employees stationed in their state offices
CDC ignores congressional reports and/or hearings
CDC actively discredits/destroys reputable researchers
CDC bilks insurance companys out of billions of dollars by knowingly creating disease through their massive vaccination programs

Obama’s administration sinks in the quicksand of its liberal ambitions –few of its liberal foreign policy objectives have been met; not the closing down of Guantanamo’s prison, nor the tethering of an out-of-control surveillance apparatus, nor even the War on Terror in general. In fact, Obama has intensified the drone warfare in Yemen and Pakistan, and tethered itself to a resurgent Saudi Arabia on the back of Qatari withdrawal. To polish its carapace, the Obama administration has become a latter-day believer in gay rights on the world stage. Power went on Jay Leno’s program to talk about global LGBT rights and held a Google hangout with human rights activists where the issue of LGBT rights was center-stage (later, on twitter, Power mourned the loss of “Eric Ohena Lembembe, a courageous Cameroonian activist tortured to death last month”). But, to stay on the Uganda story, Power did not raise the issue of LGBT rights and Uganda.

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who sits on the U.S. Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, took aim at President Barack Obama’s criticism of Israel’s plans to add more housing around Jerusalem.

After Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the White House on Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama questioned the plan to add 2,500 homes, insisting it would undermine the peace process with the Palestinians.

“This development will only draw condemnation from the international community,” Earnest said. “It also would call into question Israel’s ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians.”

To begin, consider that people like Dr. Sanjay Gupta keep saying that the Dallas Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan had “told the nurse” who attended to him upon his first arrival at the Texas Presbyterian Hospital Emergency Room that he had “traveled “to” Africa.”

That’s certainly a very odd thing for a Liberian national, having just arrived from Monrovia, Liberia to the United States for the very first time in his life, to have supposedly said, is it not? Of course, it fits the CDC Checklist used prior to, and including, Duncan’s case, so that must have been exactly what Duncan said, right Sanjay?

It took only one wrong vote to teach a freshman Democrat from Texas how sensitive, and even wrathful, the Jewish community can be when it comes to Israel.

But the real story of what happened to Rep. Beto O’Rourke did not stop with the angry reaction he got when he cast one of only eight votes in Congress against special funding for Israel’s Iron Dome rocket defense system during the recent Gaza war.

What is notable is how quickly the carrot followed the stick.

It was almost a textbook case of how the establishment pro-Israel lobby works its magic — and a story not yet completed in early September, when The New Yorker magazine took note of what had happened to O’Rourke.

Webmaster's Commentary:

It is time for Americans to decide if they wish to be ruled by a foreign power or not!

y forcing Americans to buy their products, President Obama's signature Affordable Care Act is widely seen as a winning proposition for health insurance companies. Conscripted customers! What more could a well-connected business want? But the law's complex rules require insurers to cover the costs imposed by older and ailing customers with the payments from young and healthy customers. Potentially, a company could end up with a disproportionate ratio of sick customers drawn by the promise of subsidized coverage—drowning the seemingly winning proposition in red ink. If that happens, says the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the administration can't bail out insurers without permission from Congress.

A new poll finds that three-fifths of likely voters support the repeal of Obamacare. A large plurality — 44 percent — wants to see Obamacare repealed and replaced with a conservative alternative. A much smaller group —16 percent — wants to see it repealed but not replaced. Less than one in three respondents — 32 percent — would like to keep Obamacare, whether in its current form or in amended form. So, with a conservative alternative in play, 60 percent of Americans support repeal, while only 32 percent oppose it.

I have received many emails regarding the various articles I have written about the problems with the current economic system of being forced to borrow all currency at interest from a privately-owned central bank. This is, of course, the very system of banking the United States fought a revolution to be free of, only to be sold back into said banker slavery not just once, but three times by corrupted congresses and corrupted presidents.

I have been asked to collect all those articles into a single page to make it easier for people to send to their friends, and this collection is the result.

Napoleon once famously remarked that “in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” In few cases does this seem more apt than in that of Vice-President Joe Biden, perennial lapdog to the ADL’s Abraham Foxman. Biden has recently added to last year’s faux pas by recently committing the egregious sin of using the word “Shylocks” to describe mortgage lenders. The slip came in a speech to the Legal Services Corporation, which provides lawyers to Americans who could not afford them otherwise. In his remarks, the Vice-President described the experience of his son, Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, who was deployed for one year in Iraq:

People would come to him and talk about what was happening to them at home in terms of foreclosures, in terms of bad loans that were being — I mean, these Shylocks who took advantage of these women and men while overseas.

Just days after suggesting lawmakers might not debate U.S. military involvement in Syria until next year, House Speaker John Boehner said he'd agree to call Congress back into session to vote if President Barack Obama sends up a resolution asking for the authority.

Boehner told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that if the President wanted a vote, "I'd bring the Congress back" -- never mind that the U.S. has already begun airstrikes inside Syria as part of a coalition.

Boehner hopes the President requests and sends up an authorization for use of military force as soon as possible," his spokesman, Michael Steel, told CNN Monday.

Boehner left a much different impression in an interview published Thursday in The New York Times.

In 1878, the Rothschilds were back in business with the US government (after having been chased out of DC by Andrew Jackson in the 1830’s), as detailed by this cable discussing the Rothschild refinancing of American debt:

Messrs. Rothschild & Sons to Mr. Sherman.
[Cable message.]

April 12,1878.
Hon. John Sherman,
Secretary of the Treasury, Washington D. C.:

Very pleased we have entered into relations again with American Government. Shall do our best to make the business successful.

ROTHSCHILDS.

We’ve now established that the Rothschilds “entered into relations” with the US government in 1878.

Coming off of her stirring dissent in the Hobby Lobby case, 21-year veteran Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has never been a more important voice for American women. In a rare interview—featured exclusively in the October issue of ELLE—she speaks frankly with Jessica Weisberg about everything from riding an elephant with Antonin Scalia to why people who want her to resign so President Obama can appoint another progressive justice are nuts.

Rhodes dismissed a lawsuit filed by victims of the water shutoffs, which argued that the city’s policy was doing irreparable harm to residents and threatened to create a public health disaster. The residents argued that the city’s policy violated the 14th Amendment’s prohibition against a state “depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law” and the principle of “equal protection” under the law, since service to major corporations, which failed to pay, had not been discontinued.

Bank CEOs are the New Drug Lords. Here is a list of some of the banks managed by Bank CEOs, aka the new Drug Lords, that were fined billions of dollars for fixing LIBOR rates and stealing money from clients: Lloyds Bank, RP Martin, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Générale, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Barclays, United Bank of Switzerland and Rabobank. Here is a list of some of the banks in which the Bank Lords fixed FX rates and are currently negotiating fine amounts with the UK Financial Conduct Authority (FCA): Citigroup, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, JP Morgan and United Bank of Switzerland. HSBC had to pay nearly $2B in fines after its Bank CEO was allegedly caught overseeing the laundering of $7B in drug money for the notoriously violent and ruthless Sinaloa drug cartel and committing a wide array of other crimes like laundering $290MM from Russian mobsters that told HSBC bankers that their vast profits came from a “used car business”.

It is, let’s say, exceedingly peculiar to begin with that a government – in this case the American one, but that’s just one example -, in name of its people tasks a private institution with regulating not just any sector of its economy, but the richest and most politically powerful sector in the nation. Which also happens to be at least one of the major forces behind its latest, and ongoing, economical crisis.

That there is a very transparent, plain for everyone to see, over-sized revolving door between the regulator and the corporations in the sector only makes the government’s choice for the Fed as regulator even more peculiar. Or, as it turns out, more logical. But it is still preposterous: regulating the financial sector is a mere illusion kept alive through lip service. Put differently: the American government doesn’t regulate the banks. They effectively regulate themselves. Which inevitably means there is no regulation.

It is easy to find the courage necessary to support a moral position if that position benefits oneself. True moral courage, however, is proven when one chooses to support that which is morally and ethically right even when such a position is to one's one detriment.

The people of the United States find themselves in such a position right now, forced to choose between a moral and ethical position that carries with it the potential for "inconvenience", or supporting the status quo and having to admit to themselves that they are not the champions of justice they imagine themselves to be. By the end of this article, you will know for yourself which one you are.

Most folks have heard that Hawaii is a state, one of the United States of America. Most people, including those who live in Hawaii, accept that statement as a fact.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Maybe it is time to add Hawaii to the list of regions seeking independence.

Attorney General Eric Holder says he will resign as soon as his successor is confirmed, but U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, argues Holder needed to go a long time ago for politicizing every issue from Fast and Furious to the fight against radical Islam and even failing to prevent the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured 264 others.

For decades, top officials at the Environmental Protection Agency (PEA) were aware that a compound approved for agricultural use in the United States was wiping out the honeybee population, but they chose to ignore the compound's effects in deference to pressure from agri-giant corporations.

Worse, the agency reacted harshly to anyone within the EPA who attempted to bring the issue to light, including through firings, forced reassignments and other actions.

According to a scholarly 2014 study [PDF] compiled by researcher Rosemary Mason, "on behalf of a global network of independent scientists, beekeepers and environmentalists," and published on the website of MIT, "We have found historical and chronological evidence to show that the herbicide glyphosate (or other herbicides that are used as alternatives) is responsible for the transformation of garden escapes into super-weeds (in the UK these are termed 'invasive species')."

Wall Street is about to be rocked by secretly recorded audio tapes that purport to show a too-cozy relationship between the New York Federal Reserve Bank and the financial institutions it is supposed to regulate.

The 45 hours of tapes, made by Carmen Segarra, a former NY Fed worker, capture former co-workers, whose job was to keep banks like Goldman Sachs in line, instead deferring to the banks, being unwilling to take action and being extremely passive, according to NPR’s “This American Life,” which obtained the tapes and is scheduled to air a program about the matter Friday night.

Webmaster's Commentary:

A privately-owned central bank was given the task of regulating Wall Street, who are their best customers? Oh yes, that makes sense!

The rumor
Mill in Washington is that Obama wants a Supreme Court Judge to
Retire quickly (I.e., Ginsberg) so he can nominate his pick while
Harry Reed and the Dem’s still control the US Senate. Remember, this
Is a LIFE TIME appointment. Who is his rumored pick? Are you ready
For this? “ERIC HOLDER!!!”

Webmaster's Commentary:

Justice Ginsberg made a public statement a while back saying she was not ready to retire. That suggests pressure is being put on her to step down to make way for his Holderness to assume a seat!

Two days before Attorney General Eric Holder announced his resignation, a federal court ordered the Justice Department to produce, by October 22, a detailed list of Fast and Furious documents sought by a conservative watchdog group.

Conservative talker Rush Limbaugh said he “can see” Attorney General Eric Holder, who recently announced his resignation from the Department of Justice, being nominated to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

We can only imagine what scandal is brewing behind the scenes. For someone this high-up the Obama food chain to jump ship before the mid-term elections, it means something very damaging for the White House may be coming down the pipeline…

Judicial Watch announced today that on September 23, 2014, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that by October 22, the Department of Justice (DOJ) must submit a “Vaughn index” listing Fast and Furious materials Judicial Watch sought in its June 2012 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and subsequent September 2012 FOIA lawsuit (Judicial Watch v. Department of Justice (No. 1:12-cv-01510)). A Vaughn index must: (1) identify each document withheld; (2) state the statutory exemption claimed; and (3) explain how disclosure would damage the interests protected by the claimed exemption.

A massive construction project to house the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) headquarters in Washington is running over $1.5 billion over budget and 11 years behind schedule, all because of faulty government cost estimate practices.

What's the opposite of government efficiency? In a double-take-instigating headline, the federal government’s Obamacare enrollment system has cost about $2.1 billion so far, according to a Bloomberg Government analysis of contracts related to the project. BGOV’s analysis shows that costs for both healthcare.gov and the broader reform effort are far greater than anything publicly discussed. However, that pales into insignificance when considering health reform has cost American taxpayers $73 billion in the last four years... and counting.

In theory, when the U.S. deploys forces in military conflicts abroad, Congress is expected to debate and subsequently vote on the matter. Not so with the Obama administration's escalated military campaign against the Islamic State.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in an interview published Thursday that while Congress should eventually weigh in, it would be inappropriate to do so during the lame-duck session that will follow the November elections.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"And it would be just SILLY to have the vote before the elections! We could all lose our cushy jobs, fer chrissakes!!!"

The United States has begun a bombing campaign in Syria, but don’t bet on Congress returning to Washington to vote on a new war authorization anytime soon.

Shortly after airstrikes against the Islamic State in Syria started, some lawmakers started pushing again for an authorization vote. But so far, leaders aren’t gearing up to bring their members back to town.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Because they know that a Congressional vote in support of more war will cost many incumbents their seats in November.

Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general, is preparing to announce his resignation Thursday after a tumultuous tenure marked by civil rights advances, national security threats, reforms to the criminal justice system and five and a half years of fights with Republicans in Congress.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Along with "Fast and Furious", ignoring illegal immigrants, protecting Obama from the IRS targeting scandal, allowing the NSA to violate the Fourth Amendment, ignoring massive election fraud in this nation, ignoring torture and war crimes committed by the US, and so forth.

In some of his most extensive comments since the raid, Lee acknowledged that he was worried he could face major federal drug charges. It’s a risk he has lived with for many years, first as an underground pot grower and then as the leader of a serious legalization effort, which drew vigorous opposition from the federal government.

“I never wanted to be the quote unquote leader of the legalization movement,” he said in a telephone interview. “I saw myself as just one small soldier in a big war. But I look at it as a battlefield promotion.”

“We got to do something about these Asians coming in and opening up businesses and dirty shops,” Barry said in remarks on Tuesday night first reported by WRC-TV. “They ought to go. I’m going to say that right now. But we need African-American businesspeople to be able to take their places, too.”

A Harvard Business School study that Niall Ferguson pointed us to today shows the U.S. has fallen severely behind in terms of international competitiveness.

The study, from January, found that for Harvard alums personally involved in a company relocation decision, 57% said the decision "involved the possibility of moving existing activities out of the U.S."

The man who bankrolled California's closest shot yet at fully legalizing marijuana, Prop. 19, saw his Oaksterdam University cannabis college in Oakland raided by federal authorities yesterday.
And pot advocates are fuming.

The Drug Policy Alliance suggests the raid by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Internal Revenue Service might have served one possible goal:
"Payback" for the 2010 legalization effort that failed but made a good try of it. The ballot effort was backed by Richard Lee, the millionaire owner of Oaksterdam.

I was fresh from the massive anti-war marches in New York and questioned the truth of any connection between Iraq and al Qaeda, although President Bush and Vice President Cheney had drawn the association with regularity. My seatmate's whole body leaned over to the right -- literally. "I feel so sorry for you," he said. "How cynical you must be to think that the president would lie."

Now, nine years later, I feel sorry for all of us. If only, like the Beatles' Revolution 9, played backwards by disc jockeys of the day, we could rewind this tune.

It will also be very interesting to see how the media handles the real numbers as they start to emerge from the National Convention. Ron Paul may actually currently be, by some estimates, in 3rd or even 2nd place overall behind Romney and truly seems to be gaining steam as the process continues to unfold.

Some in the GOP have shuttered at the fact that young Ron Paul supporters have done their homework and decided to go out in mass to attempt forcing their candidate into the Republican nomination and have tried to do everything they can to stop them from doing so.

In what appears to be surprising news for some, Reuters has an article titled "Americans brace for next foreclosure wave" whose key premise is that "a painful part two of the [housing] slump looks set to unfold: Many more U.S. homeowners face the prospect of losing their homes this year as banks pick up the pace of foreclosures."

Yesterday saw the obscene consequences of the corrupt financial and political elite's insatiable greed, as a 77-year-old Greek man publicly committed suicide outside Parliament in Athens. The man, named locally as Dimitris Christoulas, reportedly pulled out a handgun and shot himself in the head during rush hour, having shouted "I'm leaving because I don't want to pass on my debts."...

Best-selling author Barry James Dyke, author of The Pirates of Manhattan and recently released sequel, The Pirates of Manhattan II: Highway to Serfdom maintains Ron Paul is the only candidate consistently telling Americans the truth about its finances and the role that the Federal Reserve has in America’s decline.

Recently, CIA Director David Petraeus made headlines with a speech given at the summit for In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm. In this talk, Petraeus discussed the emerging “internet of things” and the implications it will have for increased levels of surveillance. Petraeus explained that, because of the rise of gadgets which are connected and controlled by apps, intelligence agencies will no longer need to place spy devices inside your home – you will do it for them.

Monday morning's DEA raid of Oaksterdam University is making major headlines, but there's one detail missing from the coverage: why the f#$k is Obama at War with Medical Marijuana in the first place? Seriously, why is any of this even happening at all?...

The beauty, in the eyes of some, is that when things get really bad for the general population and more and more uprisings occur, an international army will better be able to step in and do crowd control (you know, keeping the peace) than a local army would, local soldiers being possibly reluctant to shoot real bullets at their own people. That may also be one of the reasons for the partnership with the US Northern Command - so that US troops could step in to put down a Canadian uprising, and vice versa.

Last, but still worth considering: maybe recruitment centres won't be needed if a draft is imposed, which of course would only occur if the predicted WWIII is not just a conspiracy fantasy.

I'm also getting the feeling our economy is going to tank (further), which means there will be lots of unemployed youth with no place to go but the military.

"The nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace," Grass wrote in his poem titled:

"What must be said"

The 84-year-old Grass said he had been prompted to put pen to paper by Berlin's recent decision to sell Israel a submarine able to "send all-destroying warheads where the existence of a single nuclear bomb is unproven."

"The nuclear power Israel is endangering the already fragile world peace," he wrote. His poem specifically criticized Israel's "claim to the right of a first strike" against Iran.

Tbilisi-based legal advocacy group, Georgian Young Lawyers’ Association (GYLA) said in a statement on April 5, that the Civil Registry Agency’s decision to refuse Bidzina Ivanishvili in citizenship through naturalization “is not in line with provisions of the Georgian legislation.”

Saakashvili still has until the end of today to overturn the Civil Registry's recommendation that Ivanishvili's application be refused. If he doesn't then he is guilty of making the law up as he goes along...

“If at the time of undergoing naturalization process, an applicant has a foreign citizenship, there should be this applicant’s declared will that in case of entering into the Georgian citizenship, he/she will renounce citizenship of any other country,” GYLA said.

Before applying for citizenship through naturalization, Ivanishvili on December 29, 2011 submitted to the French embassy in Tbilisi a request for launching procedures for his withdrawal from the French citizenship. One of his lawyers, Shalva Tadumadze, said at the time that the move did not mean that Ivanishvili would now become a stateless person; Ivanishvili’s French citizenship would only be revoked in case of gaining the Georgian citizenship, the lawyer said.

“The Civil Registry Agency was aware about [Ivanishvili’s] will that he would have renounced his French citizenship in case of gaining Georgian citizenship. Accordingly, in this particular case, the goal of the law that a person should be only a Georgian citizen after receiving Georgian citizenship through naturalization would have been achieved,” GYLA said.

GYLA also cited the January 30, 2009 presidential order number 39 and a citizenship application form to back its claim that the Civil Registry Agency’s decision was not in accordance to the law. The group said that a citizenship application form contains one line in which an applicant is required to state that in case of granting Georgian citizenship he/she agrees to renounce citizenship of a foreign country and has to indicate that country.

GYLA says this formulation in the application form “unambiguously” shows that an applicant has the right to renounce foreign citizenship only after entering into the Georgian citizenship.

“The goal of the Georgian legislation is that after gaining Georgian citizenship through naturalization, a person should not remain a citizen of any other country. In this particular case, this goal was easily achievable – the Georgian President could have issued a decree on granting Georgian citizenship to a person, which would have been enforced not immediately (to avoid that a person would become a citizen of two countries simultaneously), but only after receiving an official document from the relevant French authorities on satisfying [Ivanishvili’s] application on renouncing French citizenship,” GYLA said.

A day after being refused in citizenship through naturalization by the Civil Registry Agency, Bidzina Ivanishvili, leader of an opposition Georgian Dream coalition, said he was still confident that he would regain his Georgian passport.

He said the Civil Registry Agency’s decision was so “feeble” and “senseless” that it was not even worth of commenting.

“We will boost the Georgian people’s spirit; I have a concrete plan,” he said. “We will gradually force the authorities to back-off from violence… I promise that we will bring on a situation by this fall wherein the Georgians won’t have any fear and they will freely turn out [at polling stations] and make right choice and we will say no to oppressor Saakashvili,” Ivanishvili said.

Ivanishvili also said on April 5, that decision of the Civil Registry Agency showed President Saakashvili’s “fear” towards a strong political opponent.

“Saakashvili is so afraid, he is in such agony, that he is not even capable to look several days ahead, otherwise he could have seen very well an outrage of the Georgian and international community towards his illegal actions,” Ivanishvili said.

In his comments Ivanishvili hinted that after coming into politics he was trying to provoke President Saakashvili on such actions that would have demonstrated, as Ivanishvili put it, “his real face.”

“I’ve been trying in recent six months to act in a way, to address him in a way that would have maximally promptly and well demonstrated his real face… I think we have managed it very well and I think no one in Georgia has an illusion about who this man [Saakashvili] is and about the fact that the country is ruled by a single man and everything depends on his mood,” Ivanishvili said.

“As a matter of principle, the United States believes that citizenship laws should be adjudicated and applied in a way that reinforces the underlying principle of equality before the law and in this particular instance we urge the government of Georgia to resolve the ongoing question of Mr. Ivanishvili’s citizenship fairly and expeditiously,” outgoing U.S. Ambassador John Bass told journalists on April 5, when asked about the Civil Registry Agency’s decision on Ivanishvili’s citizenship application.

We had reported on the show that a group of political activists and journalists testified in a New York Court about why they're suing the Obama administration over the National Defense Authorization Act or NDAA. Chris Hedges, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter is also one of the plaintiffs; he joins the show to discuss.

The best and cheapest way of protecting our national security is simply to eject the madmen from the Foreign Office and stop pimping for the US and its mad-dog protegé.

Let’s see how quickly the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), with Mr Bellingham’s help, can get their skates on and straighten out the simple matter of Palestine’s status so that Israel’s strutting psychopaths can finally be brought to book.

After President Barack Obama attacked him by name for the first time, Mr Romney denounced his rival as an "out-of-touch liberal" deluded after "years of flying around on Air Force One" with "true believers".

Vowing to defeat Mr Obama in November's general election, he pledged to replace the president's "government-centred society" with an "opportunity society led by free people and free enterprises".

In a speech yesterday in Washington DC – whose primary he won alongside Maryland and Wisconsin on Tuesday – Mr Romney accused Mr Obama of running a "hide-and-seek campaign".

"While I understand why the President doesn't want to run on his record, he can't run from his record either," he said. "Unlike the President, I have a record that I am proud to run on".

Last year, the media was buzzing about the possibility of Enviro-pig entering the American and Canadian food markets.

The way our regulatory agencies work is to keep pending approvals for genetically modified animals on file, in secret, until a decision determines if it's suddenly in the stores unlabeled, or no, not yet.

Enviro-pig is a creation from Canada's University of Guelph scientists and hog industry Ontario Pork. Birthed in 1999, with 10 generations since. The DNA of Yorkshire pigs were spliced with DNA from e.coli for phosphorous digestion and mice DNA to promote the e.coli gene. The pigs' make-up was changed to allow the enzyme phytase in their saliva to cut the phosphorous in their manure by about 30 percent.

Helen Thomas’s recent request to purchase a table at the upcoming White House Correspondents Association (WHCA) annual dinner has been rejected.

In a comment on that story I said, “It’s hard to imagine anything more wrong than this.”

I base my opinion on the fact that the 91-year-old Thomas, a former WHCA president, is unique among American journalists, having covered 10 different presidential administrations in a career stretching back to Dwight Eisenhower.

It is because of Thomas as much as anyone else that women were first included at the WHCA dinner since, as the WHCA’s website mentions:

Stuart Littlewood highlights Britain's double standards and contradictory policies in the Middle East: on the one hand irrational belligerence and warmongering towards Iran even though this is contrary to British national interests, and on the other cosying up to and taking its cue from Israel, a criminal, aggressive state whose behaviour contradicts British values and interests.

New data shows Washington has given more than 115 billion dollars in financial aid to Israel over the years, indicating Tel Aviv’s great dependence on the US.

According to the report published by the Congressional Research Service Israel has received more assistance from the US than 15 European countries did to recover from the devastation caused during World War II...

The Auditor-General’s damning indictment of deception and mismanagement over the F-35 fighter-jet program not only damages the Conservatives’ reputation for probity, it also discredits their extreme rhetoric against the opposition. Because the opposition was right.

Stephen Harper has now moved swiftly to place the procurement on a sounder footing. But the revelations of false estimates and suppressed information, coming only days after an austerity budget, could tarnish the Conservative brand like nothing that has come before.

After nearly unprecedented pushback against bills SOPA and PIPA, their apparent defeat cannot yet be claimed. Most skeptics presumed that the defeat of the aforementioned would only serve to offer a compromised "SOPA light" at some point to circumvent criticism over government censorship. Well, it didn't take long...

What does the Georgian government think it can get away with, and what is it willing to risk? Too many people in Misha's circle have blood on their hands and will not give up the power which is their main or only source of livelihood; even it is the family business with some, without more blood being spilt. Many of them have demonstrated their willingness to kill before (for example, Culture Minister Nika Rurua was once exiled from the country for his long involvement with murderous gangsters only to be rehabilitated by Saakashvili without any renunciation of his crimes), and "Bacho" Akhalaia, the current Minister of Defense that once worked in the prison system and tortured prisoners for the fun of it, causing riots which resulted in prisoners being gunned down.

Such people have no place a democratic society, as confirmed by reports from the US Embassy and Human Rights organizations; they, including closely knit clans will likely not hesitate to kill and torture again. Bidzina Ivanishvili will have to maneuver carefully to prevent his supporters and the masses he seeks to win over from being threatened or killed, while also looking out for his own life (example of the late Badri Patarkatsishvili, another man branded as “oligarch” in the same way, can be recalled here).

Some may consider that Georgia is in a pretty sorry state when its people have to resort to placing their hopes in the hands of a person [Ivanishvili] worth 6.4 billion USD, but with no experience of elective office or any discernible program. This just goes to show the extent to which real democracy and rule of law is absent in Georgia. On the other hand, if someone with so much money can’t change the situation, who on Earth possibly could?

Ivanishvili’s wealth, and the fact that he is not Saakashvili, is his so-called competitive advantage, and among the cards that he can really play. However, Georgians do have the democratic right to elect someone for these reasons alone, if they so choose, but if the international community had accepted the democratic will of the Georgian people during the days of President Zviad Gamsakhurdia, the first democratically elected president, who alienated everyone except the voters by doing what he told the voters he would do, we would not be facing the present problem.

The authorities’ “illegal” and “politically-motivated” decision not to grant Bidzina Ivanishvili Georgian citizenship through naturalization will not derail his opposition coalition Georgian Dream’s electoral plans, Maia Panjikidze, a spokesperson for the Ivanishvili-led coalition said on April 4.

MP Giorgi Targamadze, leader of Christian-Democratic Movement and of a small parliamentary minority group, said “no one will believe” the ruling party lawmakers’ statements that the Civil Registry Agency’s decision was only about legal matters.

It seems that the Saakashvili gang, unable to find a reason to refuse Ivanishvili the restoration of his citizenship which was withdrawn, apparently in an attempt to prevent him from running in the forthcoming elections, has resorted to stonewalling tactics by saying, after waiting the full 3 months in which they must legally respond to his application to become a naturalized Georgian citizen, that he must now apply for dual-citizenship (as he currently holds a French passport) and wait a further 3 months for a decision on his new application, rather than grant him citizenship now, under the naturalization process.

There are two stories that have come to light recently, the first is the awarding of a contract to a munitions manufacturer for 450,000,000 hollow point rounds for the .40 caliber.

The second story which I wrote is how the Department of Homeland Security had already ordered 200,000,000 rounds of .40 caliber, but also ordered 15,000 gun cleaning kits for the .40 caliber weapons, and has put a request out for a virtual shooting gallery for the .40 caliber handguns.

650,000,000 round of ammunition is quite a bit of lead and brass. It will sure to drive the price of copper and brass way up. But Homeland Security is not alone in their requests.

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s war against cyberattacks. But the vague verbiage contained within the pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties. Critics have already come after CISPA for the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will do has yet to surface to the same degree.

The Obama Justice Department has roughly 24 hours to explain to a federal appeals court whether the administration believes judges have the power to overturn federal laws — in the latest escalation between the two branches of government over the federal health care overhaul.
A three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the Justice Department to explain by Thursday at noon whether the administration believes judges have that authority. The challenge came after President Obama cautioned the Supreme Court against overturning the health care law and warned that such an act would be “unprecedented.”

New data from law enforcement agencies across the country has confirmed what EFF has long been afraid of: while police are routinely using cell phone location tracking information, only a handful of agencies are bothering to obtain search warrants.

Since 2005, we've been beating the drum loudly, warning that the government's attempts to track a person's physical location through their cell phone requires a search warrant.

As we've said again and again, because cell phone tracking can give the government a snapshot of a person's life through their movements, a search warrant is necessary to safeguard against privacy intrusions...

Once our Owners figured Public Perception that Romney was
going to be the Inevitable Pick, was drummed into our brains
from the Lying Media, they now can begin
Fabricating the November Election. Hell NO!
John McCain Get Out. The Traitor needs to Go away now.
Yahoo is now censoring my comments and Youtube is playing games.
Apparently I must be on the Right track.
No Romney and No More Obama. 3rd party or we are screwed.
Not this Time you Bastards. The Revolution is On.
You will give us Ron Paul or We are going to Blow it up.
My Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/rtxyz1?feature=mhee
We have to End the Fed, we have to
pull this thing up by the Roots.

An emergency meeting of university rectors on Tuesday heard that only 33m euros remained of 120m euros that 17 Greek universities had deposited with the Bank of Greece for their operating expenses, while six university accounts were now completely empty meaning they would soon be unable to stay open.

A proposed law in Arizona could give employers the right to fire women who use birth control. The bill, which sailed right through the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, grants employers the right to ask for proof that contraceptives are being taken for non-contraceptive reasons.

As the US State Department, USAID-centric Invisible Children psy-op KONY 2012 collapses, Invisible Children has disabled comments on their viral YouTube video.

When last checked, negative comments were voted to the top and a cascading effect of skepticism as well as damning facts began drowning out the initial confusion, sympathy, and emotional knee-jerk support the propaganda video purposefully created and preyed upon...

Shall We Put an End to the Human Race or Shall Mankind Renounce War? -- Bertrand Russell

Julian Rose
Activist Post

Looming up in front of us like some ghoulish malevolent giant, is the prospect of mankind having to endure the devastation of a 'Third World War'.

An event, should it come to pass, would pit brother against brother, sister against sister, 'faith' against 'faith', ideology against ideology, nation against nation and all of it together against the continuation of life on Earth.

Monday was Mitt Romney's 65th birthday. Happy birthday, Mittens. In honor of his 65th birthday he announced that he would not be enrolling in Social Security or Medicare. How noble. Except, it's not.

In deference to the conservative dogs nipping his heels, Romney has endorsed the Paul Ryan Medicare plan which would voucherize Medicare and leave senior citizens floundering on their own with private insurance companies. Of course, if you asked Mitt Romney about it, what you'd get is a bunch of lies. Really awful, cynical, blatant lies.

He noted that opposition had increased in the run-up to January’s planned vote in the US Congress on two legislative initiatives -- the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) -- aimed at increasing the protection of intellectual property rights on the Internet; in the end the vote had not been held, following a hostile campaign by social networks and the loss of White House support.
It's interesting to see De Gucht linking the growing hostility to ACTA with the storm generated by SOPA/PIPA, and giving the credit for stopping those US bills to a "hostile campaign" waged by social networks. You can tell this really worries him, because he says something similar about social networks and ACTA immediately afterwards:

But homeless families and troubled children were not the biggest beneficiaries of Operation Good Neighbor. Instead, the foundation spent most of its money to run itself, including hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees for fundraising, administration and office rental paid to Santorum’s political allies.

Seemingly alone among private-equity firms, Romney’s Bain Capital was a master at bait-and-switching Wall Street bankers to get its hands on the companies that provided the raw material for its financial alchemy. Other private-equity firms I worked with extensively over the years — Forstmann Little, KKR, TPG and the Carlyle Group, among them — never dared attempt the audacious strategy that Bain partners employed with great alacrity and little shame. Call it the real Bain way.

Newt Gingrich and his consulting companies helped financial-services giant Credit Suisse Group gather exclusive Washington information and analysis, showing that the Republican presidential candidate benefited from a practice that has come under fire from lawmakers.

This "political intelligence" business—while legal—also risks muddying the campaign argument by the former House speaker that he has been a Washington outsider since he left Congress in 1999.

Wouldn’t it be great if a Republican presidential candidate could just buy the support of just about every major conservative talk show host in America? Well, it may not be as far-fetched as you may think.

Clear Channel owns more radio stations (850) than anyone else in the United States. They also own Premiere Radio Networks, the company that syndicates the radio shows of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, among others.

Needless to say, Clear Channel basically owns conservative talk radio in the United States. So who owns Clear Channel?

Webmaster's Commentary:

Of course all these conservative propagandists, in addition to their radio shows on Clear Channel, also have programs on TV as well, into which they carry their agenda. after all, they cannot be pro-Romney on their radio shows, then be pro-anyone else on TV! So, Bain not only controls the pro-Romney bias of Clear Channel but indirectly the content of TV political reporting as well!

TEHRAN, Jan 10 (Reuters) - Iran's currency has slid 20 percent against the dollar in the last week despite central bank intervention, and Iranians concerned about the economy said on Tuesday attempts to send text messages using the word "dollar" appeared to be blocked.

The central bank reportedly pumped $200 million dollars into the market last Wednesday after new and much tougher U.S. sanctions prompted nervous Iranians to change rials into hard currency, accelerating a rise in the price of dollars on the open market.

One of Britain's largest lobbying companies has been secretly recorded boasting about its access to the heart of the Government and how it uses the "dark arts" to bury bad coverage and influence public opinion. An undercover investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, published in The Independent today, has taped senior executives at Bell Pottinger

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Webmaster's Commentary:

As I type these words, the question on everyone's mind is whether this international revolution that started in Iceland and has already spread to Egypt and the Middle East will continue to spread across America. At the gas pumps and the supermarket checkout lines, the people speak of rebellion openly, if less furtively with each passing day.

There really is no way to avoid it. The money-addicts have created a world where firing the government is not only the best option; for most of us it is the only option. To not revolt is to condemn our children to lives of starvation and hopeless debt slavery to the Private Central Bankers, Goldman-Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc. et. al. under a government with a demonstrated history of looting the people to feed the bankers, a government that views our lives as cheap and easily sacrificed for wars of conquest, or to be discarded without complaint to keep Israel happy when it attacks Americans in international waters.

Even now, the US Government prepares to solve its present debt crisis by embezzling the American taxpayer of their retirements by defaulting on the loans made to the US Government by Social Security. They will praise your silent consent as 'patriotism, but is such silence really patriotic? The men who created this nation did not think so!

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains set lightly upon you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."--Samuel Adams

The tragic reality is that the US Government has already declared war on the people of the United States. Bit by bit our rights are trampled on. Our wealth is confiscated for the benefit of a foreign power. Our homes are confiscated to pay the gambling debts of the bankers. Our emails are read, our phone calls listened to, our computers ransacked, all without warrant or due process. Torture and extrajudicial executions are the new reality of life under this tyranny. Our freedoms are confiscated to so that the government does not have to look with fear upon the people.

"It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace-- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!" -- Patrick Henry

What Patrick Henry really meant in those final words went beyond mere drama. Patrick Henry declared that he would no longer be a slave, either to King George or to the Bank of England. He would be free, or he would be dead, but either way King George III would no longer own him as a slave, nor the Bank of England enjoy automatic title to the proceeds of his labor, so better for England to quit and save the lives of their soldiers then to waste lives seeking a slave who refused to be a slave.

Tragically, money-addicts never care about the lives of their own soldiers.

"Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy." -- Henry Kissinger, quoted by Bob Woodward in The Final Days

So, King George III, in the throes of his money-addiction, and as owned by the Bank of England as the present government is by the Federal Reserve, tried to prove Patrick Henry wrong, which led to the humiliation at Yorktown.

Addicts to other peoples' money know no limits, no morality, no sense of fair play. They are hopelessly trapped by the allure of glittering gold. Like a Magpie, they simply must possess all that sparkles!

Bernie Madoff is the classic example. Co-founder of NASDAQ, with more money than any one man could spend in a lifetime, and he still felt compelled compelled to defraud his investors for another $65 billion. This is mental illness; the money-addiction that grips Wall Street and Washington DC, which symptoms manifest as (in one example) a psychotic compulsion to wear the entire productivity of a worker's life as a decoration on one's wrist. Not content with that, next year it will be the need to wear the the entire productivity of 100 workers' lives as a decoration on one's wrist that will drive the money addicts to greater crimes against the people.

Money addicts do not see their behavior as wrong or evil. Secure in their religious delusions that wealth is the sign of God's favor, they see themselves as heroes and heroines. Lloyd Blankfein, the head of Goldman Sachs, declared he was doing "God's work" at the time we now know Goldman Sachs was looting taxpayer money directly from the US Treasury to their own pockets. In their own minds the money addicts are the good guys; the stars of the world, the rightful inheritors of all of life's blessings. Sadly, history has shown that it is often easier to kill money-junkies than to cure their addiction, let alone get them to change their minds about themselves and to acknowledge their problem and its high social costs.

So, yes, a revolution in the streets of America is now an inevitability, albeit a revolution to be fought not with guns and bombs, but with keyboards and the truth. The money-addicts in Wall Street and DC have created a situation in which revolution is unavoidable, and already we see the hired things of the bankers cracking the heads of those people who dare to proclaim their refusal to pay debts not of their own making.

And as has been the case in Egypt, the US military, openly abused on their mortgages by J. P. Morgan, stand with the people. So do many police officers whose pension funds were destroyed by the mortgage-backed securities fraud.

The message to those who would rebuild their failed financial palaces on the backs of the people is thus a simple one. We shall not bail you out ever again. Yes, you may murder those who refuse to live on less so that you may have more, but it shall not change the final outcome. Living or dead, we are your slaves no longer.

That was Patrick Henry's message all those years ago, and it is still true today.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) knows that High-Frequency Trading (HFT) manipulates the market and bilks investors out of tens of billions of dollars every year. But SEC chairman Mary Schapiro refuses to step in and take action. Instead, she's concocted an elaborate "information gathering" scheme, that does nothing to address the main problem. Schapiro's plan--to track large blocks of trades by large institutional investors-- is an attempt to placate congress while the big Wall Street HFT traders to continue to rake in obscene profits. It achieves nothing, except provide the cover Schapiro needs to avoid doing her job.

Two enforcement lawyers at the Securities and Exchange Commission are being investigated by federal prosecutors and the FBI for possible insider-trading violations, according to a report from the SEC's inspector general.

The criminal investigation, which was disclosed to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro in a March 3 memo, came about after SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz conducted his own investigation into the matter and referred it to criminal authorities after discovering suspicious trading activity.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Is this one reason Madoff went unchecked for so long? Were SEC insiders sharing in the goodies?

Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee, Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) today sent a letter to Ms. Mary Schapiro, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) requesting documents that could reveal which government agency told the SEC to "stand down" rather than take enforcement action against the Stanford Group in October 2006 as has been reported by the New York Times.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I want to know who told the SEC to stand down from investigating Madoff!!!

Obama Slipping: Black America Waking Up - To the Nightmare
Wed, 08/10/2011 - 13:33 — Glen Ford
Having invested so much in the Obama persona – and endlessly reaffirmed that commitment in countless settings with fellow African Americans – it is inevitable that Black folks undergo the harshest “withdrawal” experience imaginable. The realization that the dream was a chimera is one thing, but to awaken to a catastrophe in which the Great Black Hope is revealed as the Great Black Betrayer, is another magnitude of pain. It will be an ugly – and uneven – spectacle.